1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an electronic apparatus to be functioned under control of an operation input entered by a user through a wired or wireless remote-control signal transmitter or user operation input through an operation input unit mounted on the electronic apparatus. The present invention also relates to a method of controlling such an electronic apparatus. The present invention further relates to a program used for performing such a method in the electronic apparatus.
2. Description of the Related Art
An electronic apparatus discriminates an operation key among a plurality of operation keys mounted on a remote-control signal transmitter (hereinafter, also referred to as a remote-control transmitter) when the operation key is depressed by the user to control processing for processing operation (or process function, hereinafter the same will apply). For example, when the electronic apparatus is a player, depression of a play key starts to play a sound truck or the like. The play is stopped upon depression of a stop key during the play.
Here, differences in operation of such operation keys are generally recognized after depressing an operation key and executing the startup control processing of the corresponding processing operation. In some cases, small-size characters are arranged near the corresponding operation key to represent the use of the key. However, the meanings of words represented by the small characters may be hardly recognized by a user.
An example of a method for preventing the user from incorrectly inputting with such an operation key is disclosed in Japanese Published Patent Application No. 2007-272500.
In this patent document, display items, such as symbols, figures, and characters, corresponding to the respective operation keys to be depressed are continuously displayed on a display screen. In addition, each of the operation keys is provided with a sensor that detects a touch thereon. If the sensor detects that the operation key is touched, then the corresponding display item is highlighted to distinguish itself from other display items.
Therefore, even without actually depressing an operation key, the user may touch the operation key to highlight the corresponding display item. Thus, the user finds that the touched operation key is the desired one or not. Therefore, the user is prevented from incorrectly inputting.
However, according to the method of the above patent document, the display screen is obliged to continuously display the display items corresponding to a plurality of operation keys. Thus, the display screen is limited to a particular use, such as a manipulation screen with operation keys. In other words, as described in the paragraph of the above patent document, the use of such a method is limited to a vending machine or the like where key switches correspond to the respective commercial products and display items are also provided for recognizing the respective commercial products.
Furthermore, in the method of the above patent document, any of display items corresponding to the respective operation keys is highlighted upon touching to recognize whether the touched operation key is one that the user intends to operate. In other words, such a method is not applicable to the use in which the user is able to recognize what kind of processing operation will be performed when the operation key is depressed.